


Rowan Tree Falling

by dragons_SRSunn



Category: Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland
Genre: Dragonslayer characters, During Canon, Pre-Canon, Rowan's and Leaf's and Wren's father, Rowan's and Leaf's and Wren's mother, Takes place before The Dragonet Prophecy arc, before part of canon, during part of canon, if I calculated correctly, just warning that it's sort of depressing at the end, mentions of the dragonmancers Crow and Trout and Gorge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26443375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_SRSunn/pseuds/dragons_SRSunn
Summary: When Rowan let her seven-year-old sister Wren hide some books she'd stolen from the dragonmancers on her shelf, she had no idea what it would lead to.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Rowan Tree Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This is really written by a friend who was too shy to get her own account.

When Rowan let her seven-year-old sister Wren hide some books she'd stolen from the dragonmancers on her shelf, she had no idea what it would lead to.

She didn't particularly care about the books, as long as they didn't take up too much space. She didn't know what was in them. She opened one at random once, out of curiosity. The page she saw was full of numbers and diagrams. It looked complicated. Rowan thought that Wren must be really desperate for something to read if she was willing to read this. Then again, Wren was _always_ desperate for something to read. She was really smart for seven years old and, ever since she'd learned to read when she was four, had read just about every book in the village, which was why she had stolen the dragonmancers'.

Rowan didn't like the dragonmancers. They had too much power. Everybody was scared of them and did whatever they said, and the dragonmancers acted like they _enjoyed_ people being afraid of them.

And then there was the fact that none of their apprentices lived long enough to become dragonmancers themselves...

So Rowan was happy to passively rebel against them by letting her youngest sister hide books she'd stolen from them on her shelf. It wasn't much, but it was something, at least. 

Besides, Rowan thought, if the dragonmancers kept important books somewhere a seven-year-old could find them, they basically deserved to have them stolen anyway.

So Rowan kept the books on a corner of her shelf, and Wren snuck up to read them whenever she had a chance.

And then their mother found them.

Rowan came home from school one day to find her mother white as a ghost and a few very familiar books on the table.

"Hey," Rowan started. "Those are-"

"Where did you get these from?" her mother interrupted. "Where did you find them? These belong to the dragonmancers!"

Rowan had never seen her mother like this before. Her eyes were wild with anger and fear- _but of what?_

"Where did you find these?" her mother repeated. "Did you _read_ them? These contain the dragonmancers' secrets! You can't read them like any common book! Do you have any idea of how much danger you've put our family in?"

"I-" Rowan started. How would reading them put their family in danger?

Rowan's mother crossed the room and began shaking her shoulders. " _Tell me!_ "

"They're not mine!" Rowan yelled desperately. "They're Wren's!"

Her mother's eyes narrowed. "They're _Wren's_?" she asked disbelievingly.

Rowan nodded, wrenching herself out from her mother's grip. "Yes," she said, walking quickly backwards to the far wall. "She stole them, I don't know how, but I guess she really wanted to read something, and she asked me if she could keep them with my things and I said yes..." Rowan was babbling now, she could tell, but she didn't care. She would do anything to stop her mother from looking at her like that. 

Rowan's mother glared at her for one more endless moment. Then she turned sharply and left the room.

Rowan spent the rest of the day on tenterhooks, but nothing happened. Which made her worry that something was going to happen to Wren. No matter what Rowan told herself, she couldn't escape the fact that she'd essentially thrown her little sister into the dragon's mouth.

"What does that mean?" Grove asked when she told this to him.

Rowan threw her hands up in the air. "It's an expression! It means I got her in trouble to save myself."

"Look," Grove told her, trying to be reassuring, "you did what you had to. What else could you have done? From what you told me about your mother's reaction, it seems like she was pretty scary. _You'd_ have been badly punished. But Wren-she's seven years old. What are they going to do to her already? Worst-case scenario, the dragonmancers will give her a speech on how everyone has to obey them or something."

Rowan nodded slowly. What Grove said was probably true. And yet she couldn't escape a chilling feeling of foreboding.

That night, Rowan's father went to talk to the dragonmancers, muttering something about "damage control." He came back an hour later, as pale as Rowan's mother had been earlier, his hands shaking.

"Are you all right?" Rowan asked him as he stood in the doorway. He stared at her, and yet she had the feeling he wasn't seeing her. Rowan shivered. She'd never seen him like this, not even when dragons flew overhead and they had to hide in the root cellar.

"Father?" she asked.

He started. He gazed at her blankly for a moment, then shook his head and walked into the next room.

Rowan's parents began having whispered discussions in whichever room she and her siblings weren't in, and abruptly stopping whenever one of them entered. They also seemed to have stopped looking at Wren. This went on for three days.

On the fourth day, Rowan came home from school to find both her parents waiting for her. Ominous tingles shivered down her spine, but she waited for them to speak first.

"Rowan," her father began, sounding tense. "We need you to take your sisters to the neighbor's house for a few hours."

Rowan frowned. "Okay..." she said slowly. "Which neighbor?"

"It doesn't matter," her mother told her. "Just go to one, and make sure your sisters don't leave the house. Except Wren."

"Wren can leave the house?"

"No," her mother said quietly."Wren is staying with us."

 _That will go over well,_ Rowan thought. If Wren had the slightest idea that she was being left out of something, she and Leaf would wreak havoc on the entire village. 

That reminded her of something. "What about Leaf?"

Her parents exchanged a quick glance. "Your uncle is taking him hunting," her father told her.

This was unusual. Rowan's uncle didn't often take the younger children hunting. It was like her parents were trying to get all of their children out of the house for a while. All of them except Wren, for some reason.

"Why?" Rowan asked. "Why can't we leave the neighbor's house? Why are we going there in the first place? What's going on?"

Her parents looked at each other again.

"She's old enough to know," her mother said quietly.

Her father nodded and turned back to Rowan. "You know," he began, and cleared his throat. "You know," he said again, "that the dragonmancers protect the village. They have visions that warn them whenever the dragons are near."

Rowan nodded. This sounded like the beginning of every Dragonmancer Appreciation Day speech.

Her father coughed. "But sometimes," he went on, swallowing, "in exchange for the warnings, the dragons demand....a sacrifice."

"A sacrifice," Rowan repeated slowly. She felt cold. "You mean, like a sheep or something, right?"

"No," her mother said quietly. "In exchange for warning them, and through that, protecting the entire village, the dragons demand...a person."

Rowan stared.

"One person, in exchange for the safety of the entire village," her mother reiterated, like she was trying to get Rowan to understand what two plus two was. "It's a fair trade, isn't it?"

"Human sacrifice?" Rowan whispered, appalled.

Her father winced. "It's not as barbaric as it sounds," he said. "It's just...doing what we have to do, to protect the rest of us."

"The rest of us are still eaten by dragons sometimes!"

"Not as many as would be eaten otherwise."

"How do you know?"

"The dragonmancers say-" her mother started.

Rowan flung her hands in the air. "Well, of course the dragonmancers say! They're the ones telling you to sacrifice people!"

She realized she was almost crying, that her parents could be capable of speaking of and abetting such horrible acts like it was a normal part of life. For them, perhaps it was. That was almost the worst part.

A thought suddenly struck her. "That apprentice of the dragonmancers', the one who died five years ago. He wasn't eaten by a dragon accidentally, was he?"

The looks on her parents' faces gave her her answer.

All the little things she'd ever noticed-that apprentice being eaten by dragons despite the bell that apprentice dragonmancers rang to warn the village of dragons being nowhere near where the dragon had been sighted, the whispered conversations, the way her parents had avoided looking at Wren-were all coming together to form a hideous picture in her mind.

"How can you _do_ this?" she whispered.

"We do what we have to," her father replied.

"But we don't have to!" Rowan pleaded. "We could hide her in the woods, or we could _all_ hide in the woods, we could go to the Indestructible City!"

Her parents were shaking their heads. 

"We would never make it," her mother told her. "The dragonmancers would find us. We have to listen to them, to protect our family-"

"From the dragons? Or the dragonmancers?" Rowan interrupted. "Wren's our family too! What if they ask for Leaf next? Or Bluebell? Or _me_?"

Without waiting to hear if her parents had an answer-and if they did have one, she didn't know if she wanted to hear it- Rowan ran for the door. She could find Wren, warn her to run, maybe even run away with her, because Wren was seven years old and probably couldn't get far on her own and what if Rowan was next? They could lie low in the woods, make their way to the Indestructible City, maybe even find the Dragonslayer-

"WREN!" she shouted as she wrenched the door open. "WRE-!"

Two strong hands yanked her back inside and covered her mouth, and another set of hands slammed the door, and her parents dragged her deep into the house. Her father uncovered her mouth once they were at the back of the house, but both her parents each kept a firm grip on one of her arms.

"What are you _doing_?" Rowan's mother demanded, looming over her. "Do you have any idea of how much danger you are putting our family in? If the dragonmancers knew, they'd-"

"They'd what?" Rowan shouted, fighting to break free. "Sacrifice me too?"

"Well, maybe they should!" her mother hissed. "If you can't understand why we need to do this for our family, then maybe _you_ shouldn't be part of our family either!"

Rowan's struggles faltered, and her parents used the opportunity to quickly bundle her into the root cellar and close the door. Rowan immediately tried to open it, but she was too late-it was already locked.

Rowan banged on the door. "Let me out!" she yelled. "Mother! Father! You can't do this! Let me out!"

There was no response.

How could they do this? How could they give their own child to the dragons?

Rowan remembered something.

 _I threw my sister into the dragon's mouth,_ she'd told Grove. It was just an expression meaning she'd gotten her sister in trouble. It didn't literally mean that she'd fed her sister to a dragon.

 _But I did,_ Rowan thought, feeling sick. _I really, really did._

She took a deep breath. She had to find a way out of here so she could rescue Wren, and maybe she should leave with her siblings and all her friends while she was at it because who knew who would be next? She began to frantically search the cellar for something, anything, that could help her escape.

But she couldn't find another way out of the cellar. She couldn't find anything to break down the door with. She couldn't find any tools to pick the lock. All Rowan could do was pound helplessly on the door while her parents and the dragonmancers brought her sister to her fate.


End file.
